The experiments here are designed to try and work out how hard drivers have to work mentally (Lene Harbott) As Harbott works I ask her how a neuroscientist came to be working in the automotive industry. “I have a love of motor sports inherited from my Dad, particularly vintage motor sports,” she tells me. “We grew up not far from Silverstone [in the UK]. So we used to go and watch the vintage racing all the time.” Stanford was already running programmes to collect as much data as possible from cars, and she suggested collecting data from humans would be useful too. Once I’m wired up, Erlien leads me to the X1. I clamber into the low vehicle, and settle into the racing seat, buckling up the four-point safety harness. The vehicle is a mass of cables and components, and Erlien, sitting in a passenger seat with a laptop, reads their resulting data. It also allows him to adjust parameters on the fly. We set off around the campus at Stanford, dodging cyclists and other traffic. I am already having to concentrate quite hard. Then Erlien plays with the settings, and suddenly the car has four-wheel steering and handles totally differently. Tests of the X1 at Thunderhill Raceway in Northern California subjected the drivers to even more extreme changes – I get off lightly as a newbie. They were suddenly thrown into a slide by scientists who programmed the rear wheels to move. The driver would have to apply a quick oversteer correction to keep from spinning out. It’s an emulation of hitting a patch of ice, or oil. Data is collected from the car, showing the steering wheel angle (ie: which direction the driver is trying to steer) and the pedal positions.
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